New Poll Seeks Answers about Health Problem Diagnoses after ‘Safe’ Coronavirus Shots

Are many people who took experimental coronavirus “vaccine” shots being diagnosed with serious medical conditions? It is an important question to ask when evaluating the much repeated by politicians and the big money media claim that the shots are safe.

Children’s Health Defense sought answers directly from the shot takers by commissioning a poll from John Zogby Strategies that was conducted from July 22 through July 24.

Children’s Health Defense lays out some of the results in a Thursday article at its website. The article starts with the following:

More than two years after Operation Warp Speed began,  Children’s Health Defense (CHD) commissioned John Zogby Strategies to conduct two surveys about attitudes and the overall health of American adults.

The first survey of 1,038 adults found that 67% of respondents received one or more COVID-19 vaccines, while 33% are unvaccinated. Furthermore, among those vaccinated, 6% received one dose, 28% received two doses, 21% received three doses, and 12% took four or more.

Of those receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, 15% say they’ve been diagnosed by a medical practitioner with a new condition within a matter of weeks to several months after taking the vaccine.

A follow-up question provided a list of medical conditions and asked diagnosed respondents to “select all that apply.” Among those who were medically diagnosed with a new condition within a matter of weeks to several months after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, the top five cited conditions were:

• 21% blood clots

• 19% heart attack

• 18% liver damage

• 17% leg clots/lung clots

• 15% stroke 

Notably, the polled individuals do not include people under the age of 18. Children, now down to the age of six months old, are the latest target for the campaign to pressure everyone to receive the shots. Also, of course, people who have died after receiving the shots cannot take part in polls.

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/july/31/new-poll-seeks-answers-about-health-problem-diagnoses-after-safe-coronavirus-shots/

Lavrov is on Blinken’s List of People to Call

The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at a press availability at the State Department on Wednesday made the dramatic announcement that he intends to speak to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov “in the coming days … for the first time since the war began” in Ukraine on February 24.

Interestingly, he gave an alibi that harks back to the Soviet era — prisoner exchange.

The US is offering a swap of a Russian entrepreneur Viktor Bout, who was arrested in Thailand in 2008 on a US warrant and later convicted to 25 years in prison on charges of weapons trafficking, in exchange for Brittney Griner, a basketball star who has been detained at Moscow airport on drug charges and, importantly, Paul Whelan, an ex-US Marine, who was arrested in Russia in 2018 and sentenced to 16 years in prison two years later on charges of espionage.

Whelan surely was a prize catch for the Russians. The American ambassador in Moscow had been visiting him in prison.

Blinken also added a second topic he’d like to discuss with Lavrov —implementation of the recent “grain deal”. Washington played no role in negotiating the deal and is presumably hoping to make a lateral entry into the matrix now. Blinken claimed he is “seeing and hearing around the world a desperate need for food, a desperate need for prices to decrease.  And if we can help through our direct diplomacy encourage the Russians to make good on the commitments they’ve made, that will help people around the world, and I’m determined to do it.”

Interestingly, in a veiled reference to the US, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavuсoglu stated Wednesday on broadcaster Tv100 that there were countries who “wanted to block” the grain deal between Russia and Turkey, who want the Ukraine conflict “to prolong”, as they think the longer Moscow’s special military operation continues, “the weaker Russia will be.”

Fair enough. Blinken then came to the real purpose of his forthcoming call with Lavrov — “the plans that Russia now has to pursue the annexation of Ukrainian territory.”

Blinken repeated the hyperbole that sanctions are having “a powerful and also growing effect” and has “weakened Russia profoundly” and the Biden administration will do all that it can “to strengthen Ukraine’s position on the battlefield so it has the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.”

However, what comes through is the growing disquiet in Washington that to its utter disbelief, the Russian stance has only hardened lately. Blinken said it is “causing alarms.” In particular, he noted Lavrov’s remark last week that the Kremlin’s goals in Ukraine had expanded. “Now they seek to claim more Ukrainian territory, beyond the Donbas,” he commented. 

Indeed, the war has spun out of US algorithm. As Hungarian PM Orban pointed out last week, anti-Russian sanctions “have not shaken Moscow,” but Europe has already lost four governments and is in an economic and political crisis.

Russia is paying back to the US and NATO in the same coin that the latter did when they dismembered Yugoslavia. The NATO’s war in Yugoslavia came at a time when Russia was weak and it helplessly watched the West carving up a fellow Slavic country.

Russia will not be deterred now, as it is already past the mid-stream. Blinken noted frantically, “I think it’s very important now that we see what Russia’s next plan is – that is, the annexation of more Ukrainian territory – that the Russians, Foreign Minister Lavrov, hear directly from me on behalf of the United States that we see what they’re doing, we know what they’re doing, and we will never accept it. It will never be legitimised.  There will always be consequences if that’s what they do and that’s what they try to sustain.”

However, the paradox is, the initiative still lies with the US. Russian army will move deeper into Ukraine in proportion to the US’ supply of advanced weapons with long reach into Russian territory. But Moscow is interested only so that Russian territory is safe from any attack from Ukraine.

It is the Biden administration’s choice to extend the duration of the war or escalate the scope of the Russian operation. Washington made a catastrophic mistake to torpedo the Russian-Ukrainian deal stuck in April in Istanbul when Kiev agreed to settle for the modest Russian demands.

But those were halcyon days when US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin quipped — with Blinken by his side — after a quick trip to Kiev that the US wanted to see Russia “weakened to the degree that it cannot do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.” Austin boasted that Russia had “already lost a lot of military capability” and “a lot of its troops. We want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”

Hearing Austin’s battle cry, Blinken chipped in: “The strategy that we’ve put in place, the massive support for Ukraine, the massive pressure against Russia, in solidarity with more than 30 countries engaged in these efforts, is having real results. And we’re seeing that when it comes to Russian war aims.”

“Russia is failing. Ukraine is succeeding,” Blinken claimed. Now, that triumphalism was no there in Blinken’s performance yesterday.

A great beauty about press conferences is that some journalists make it lively and revealing. So, one American journalist asked Blinken, “you have been talking about how Russia is isolated internationally, and yet we see Foreign Minister Lavrov jetting off around Africa and the Middle East and President Putin going to Tehran… They make the case that they’re not isolated, and now you’re about to have this conversation with them.  So what does that say about the administration’s efforts to isolate Russia when you are actually now reaching out to them to talk about the issues?” 

Blinken’s explanation: “Matt, in terms of some of the travels that the foreign minister, for example, is engaged in, what I see is a desperate game of defence to try somehow to justify to the world the actions that Russia has taken…”

Yet, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell bitterly complained yesterday, “Lavrov visits to try to convince Africans that European sanctions are to blame for everything that is happening … and the entire western press repeats this. When I’m going to Africa to say the opposite, that sanctions have nothing to do with it, no one picks it up!”

The spectre of the collapse of EU economies is rattling the Biden Administration. A CNN report yesterday was titled US officials say ‘biggest fear’ has come true as Russia cuts gas supplies to Europe. It said the Biden administration “is working furiously behind the scenes to keep European allies united” as the blowback from the sanctions against Russia hits them  and the “impact on Europe could boomerang back onto the US, spiking natural gas and electricity prices.”

The report quoted an unnamed US official saying Russia’s retaliation for western sanctions has put the West in “unchartered territory.” Suffice to say, Blinken’s call underscores the desperate urgency in Washington to open a line of communication to Moscow at the political level.

How this volte-face plays out in European capitals, especially Kiev remains to be seen. Blinken led the western boycott of Lavrov at the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Bali as recently as July 7-8. President Biden extended a glamorous welcome to Zelensky’s wife Olena Zelenska to the White House who was on a high-profile visit last week, even as Blinken was preparing his stunning announcement.

Reprinted with permission from Indian Punchline.

from Lavrov is on Blinken’s List of People to Call

The Phoniest, Most PR-Intensive War Of All Time

The president and first lady of Ukraine have posed for a romantic photoshoot with Vogue magazine, wherein President Volodymyr Zelensky waxes poetical about his love for his darling wife.

Now, I know what you're thinking: how is Zelensky making time for a Vogue photoshoot amidst his busy schedule of PR appearances for other major western institutions? 

I mean this is after all the same Volodymyr Zelensky who has been so busy making video appearances for the Grammy Awards, the Cannes Film Festival, the World Economic Forum and probably the Bilderberg group as well, and having meetings with celebrities like Ben Stiller, Sean Penn, and Bono and the Edge from U2. It's as busy a PR tour as he could possibly have without having a discussion about the strategic importance of long-range artillery with Elmo on Sesame Street.

Oh yeah, and also isn't there like a war or something happening in Ukraine? You'd think he'd probably be somewhat busy with that too.

wartime vogue photo shoots. very serious. let’s keep sending ukraine weekly billion dollar aid packages to protect “democracy.” don’t question it. pic.twitter.com/MXVaW16K0y

— Logan Hall (@loganclarkhall) July 26, 2022

Call me crazy, but I'm beginning to suspect that there might be a concerted effort to manipulate the way we think about the war in Ukraine. In fact, I'd even go so far as to say it's the most aggressively perception-managed war we've ever experienced. 

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February we have not only been smashed with mass media propaganda unlike anything we've ever seen while Russian media are purged from the airwaves, we're also seeing the new media element of unprecedented amounts of online censorship, algorithm-boosted propaganda, and social media trolling.

So we've literally never seen this much overall effort put into manipulating the way the public thinks about a war. Which makes sense, given that it's a profoundly dangerous proxy war which stands to benefit ordinary people in no way, shape or form. 

I mean, can you imagine if people were allowed to just think their own thoughts about their government's economic warfare against Russia which is hurting them financially and pushing millions toward starvation with the full awareness and approval of the US government? Or if Americans were allowed to wonder if the billions they are pouring into this proxy conflict could be better spent at home? Or if people started objecting to a needless conflict for geostrategic domination threatening their lives and the lives of everyone they know with the risk of nuclear annihilation?

Can't have that.

Massive amount of ukrainian soldiers dying every day, Zelensky : lets have a vogue shooting pic.twitter.com/BrNPYKZYR6

— Levi (@Levi_godman) July 26, 2022

There is a night-and-day difference between wanting to tell people the truth about something and wanting to manipulate their perception of something. There are times when true facts can be used to influence people's perception one way or the other, but if your agenda is to manipulate perception rather than tell the truth you will necessarily be forced to rely on lies, half-truths, distortion, and lies by omission wherever the truth doesn't serve that agenda.

If they were telling us the truth about this war, they wouldn't be censoring Russian media. They wouldn't be censoring online voices who disagree with the official narratives about Ukraine. They wouldn't be continually blasting us in the face with mass media perception management, and they sure as hell wouldn't be putting Ukraine's celebrity-in-chief on the cover of Vogue magazine.

We are being manipulated, and we are being deceived. And we are being manipulated and deceived because our perceiving clearly on our own would go against the interests of the empire. They are lying to us because the interests of the people and the interests of the empire are, as usual, squarely at odds.

Reprinted with permission from Caitlin's Newsletter.
Support the author on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal.

from The Phoniest, Most PR-Intensive War Of All Time

No Mask Mandate Return in Los Angeles County, for Now

On July 9, I wrote about how it looked likely that a broad mask mandate would be automatically reimposed by the Los Angeles County government in California based on “cases” of coronavirus rising above and then staying at a level tagged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Here is an update with some good and bad news.

Frist, the good news: On Thursday, Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer declared the mask mandate is not being reimposed.

Now for the bad news: the mask mandate was not rejected by the county government because the county government finally admitted masks provide no net protection against coronavirus and cause health problems or decided to finally stand up for liberty and in opposition to authoritarian mandates. Instead, as explained by Ferrer, the mask mandate did not come back because, just before it was about to return, case numbers dropped back down below the threshold.

So, while the mask mandate remains absent for now, it can come back via the county’s autopilot mask policy.

from http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/july/29/no-mask-mandate-return-in-los-angeles-county-for-now/

The Biden Administration’s Recession Deception

Politicians like to redefine words to escape blame and fool the people. We have seen it before in many instances in America. A couple big uses of this propaganda tactic include denying the US tortured people by claiming it subjected them instead to “enhanced interrogation techniques” and asserting that experimental mRNA shots that don’t even stop transmission of coronavirus, or sickness or death from coronavirus, are “vaccines.”

One of the US government’s latest major propagandistic language contortions is the Joe Biden administration’s attempt to deny America is in a recession by saying a recession is something more than the two consecutive quarters of decline in gross domestic product (GDP) that has been routinely used to define a recession. Seeing that America is just about certain to be already in a recession under the long-used definition, Biden administration officials have been out in front of every camera they can find declaring, “no, it takes much more to have a recession.”

A short interview of economist and investor Peter Schiff by host Laura Ingraham at Fox News this week refutes the Biden administration’s recession deception. As Ingraham points out early in the interview, the last ten times GDP was negative for two successive quarters it was a recession. Then, Schiff notes that throughout his decades-long career in investing “recession has been described by two quarters of negative GDP growth.” Continuing, Schiff states, “we’ve got that, in fact the third quarter looks like it’s going to be an even bigger contraction than the first two.” Further, even by the Biden administration’s asserted new definition, Schiff argues a recession has arrived in America:

[United States Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen said that a recession is not two consecutive drops in GDP, it’s a broad-based economic slowdown. Well, that’s exactly what we’ve got. The auto industry is in recession. The housing industry is in recession. Retail is in recession. Advertising is in recession. So many unrelated segments of the economy are in recession. How you can’t say this is a broad-based slowdown, doesn’t make any sense.

Not only that, Schiff further predicts in the interview that the economic situation will become “a lot worse in the third quarter and then probably the fourth quarter as well.”

Watch Schiff’s interview here:

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/july/28/the-biden-administration-s-recession-deception/

Ukraine is Losing the War, and So is Europe

Beyond the damage in Ukraine, the war also has significant casualties in the rest of Europe as the continent is losing its most competitive energy supplies, compromising the region’s manufacturing edge and accelerating an inflation wave that through higher energy costs will severely affect the wellbeing of its population this coming winter.

Europe has been trying for years to diversify its energy sources but it did not have a comprehensive contingency plan to counteract the impact of abruptly severing access to Russia’s oil and gas since the beginning of the Ukraine war. European politicians have grossly exaggerated the substitution potential of other energy sources (like LNG) and are facing the need to accept alternatives that not too long ago were considered politically unpalatable, like the reopening of coal production in Germany.

How this gross miscalculation took place? Clearly, the European leadership has been unable to foresee the true economic consequences in Europe and beyond of the economic war unleashed against Russia. One explanation for the boldness and self-confidence surrounding the European standing against Russia at the beginning of the war was a strong belief that the combination of anti-Russian sanctions and military support to Ukraine would cause a significant weakening of Russia’s political, social and military standing leading to its defeat. This explains for instance bold statements that the war would only be solved in the field as it was confidently said by the EU’s foreign affairs representative back in March. 

It can be argued that the wrong assessment on the war outcome has its roots in faulty US-British intelligence which forecasted Russia’s defeat through economic warfare and, therefore, a limited impact of sanctions on Europe. This not being the case has now made European leadership to scramble for solutions. Meanwhile, the political fallout is already taking place, with Britain and Italy’s prime ministers being the most visible casualties as victims of domestic political events unleashed by their own Russian sanctions. More importantly, it doesn’t seem that the remaining European leadership (led by von der Leyen, Macron and Scholz) is willing to change course without losing significant credibility.

On the other hand, dissenting and unorthodox European political views are sounding louder, as Hungarian prime minister Orban’s recent speech where he boldly mentioned that Russian sanctions and arming Ukraine have failed, Ukraine can’t win the war, the more weapons go to Ukraine the more territory it will lose and that the West should stop arming Ukraine and focus on diplomacy.

At the heart of Europe’s current troubles is its inability to balance its economic and security interests with enough autonomy to be able to look after its own interests. European ambiguity is not new, has its roots on the post-World War II architecture and the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in relation to Ukraine it manifested in its ineptitude to enforce the Minsk agreements that clearly offered a Russo-Ukrainian peace path but were unable to be enforced by France and Germany due to relentless US and Ukrainian pressure.

It seems that only significant political alterations in the European countries that matter -namely France, Germany and Italy- will allow a meaningful change of course from the current path of confrontation with Russia and ultimately economic self-destruction. Otherwise, any political initiative towards solving the war will be left in the hands of Russia and the United States and, if that is the case, any lasting agreement will not have European interests at heart. It would be tragic that a core European problem like the Ukraine war is finally solved through the dealings of an Euro-Asian and an American power.

Oscar Silva-Valladares is a former investment banker that has lived and worked in North and Latin America, Western & Eastern Europe, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the Philippines and Western Africa. He currently chairs Davos International Advisory, an advisory firm focused on strategic consulting across emerging markets.


from Ukraine is Losing the War, and So is Europe

The All-American Lie Factory

This article is derived from a speech I delivered at the July 23rd Peace and Freedom Rally in Kingston New York.

There are some things that I believe to be true about the anarchy that purports to be US foreign policy. First, and most important, I do not believe that any voter cast a ballot for Joe Biden because he or she wanted him to relentlessly pursue a needless conflict with Russia that could easily escalate into a nuclear war with unimaginable consequences for all parties. Biden has recently declared that the US will support Ukraine “until we win” and, as there are already tens of billions of dollars of weapons going to Ukraine plus American “advisers” on the ground, it constitutes a scenario in which American and Russian soldiers will soon likely be shooting at each other. The President of Serbia and columnists like Pat Buchanan and Tulsi Gabbard believe that we are already de facto in World War 3 and one has to wonder how the White House is getting away with ignoring the War Powers mandates in the US Constitution.

Second, I believe that the Russians approached the United States and its allies with some quite reasonable requests regarding their own national security given that a hostile military alliance was about to land on its doorsteps. The issues at stake were fully negotiable but the US refused to budge on anything and Russia felt compelled to take military action. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as a good war. I categorically reject anyone invading anyone else unless there is a dire and immediate threat, but the onus on how the Ukraine situation developed the way it did is on Washington.

Third, I believe that the US and British governments in particularly have been relentlessly lying to the people and that the media in most of west is party to the dissemination of the lies to sustain the war effort against Russia in Ukraine. The lies include both the genesis and progress of the war and there has also been a sustained effort to demonize President Vladimir Putin and anything Russian, including food, drinks, the Russian language and culture and even professional athletes. The latest victim is a Tchaikovsky symphony banned in Canada. Putin is being personally blamed for inflation, food shortages and energy problems which more properly are the fault of the Washington-led ill-thought-out reaction to him. There is considerable irony in the fact that Biden is giving Ukraine $1.7 billion for healthcare, while healthcare in the US is generally considered among the poorest in the developed world.

I believe that Russia is winning the war comfortably and Ukraine will be forced to give up territory while the American taxpayer gets the bill for the reckless spending policies, currently totaling more than $60 billion, while also looking forward to runaway inflation, energy shortages, and, in a worst-case scenario, a possible collapse of the dollar.

All of the above and the politics behind it has led me to believe that the United States, assisted by some of its allies, has become addicted to war as an excuse for domestic failures as well as a replacement for diplomacy to settle international disputes. The White House hypocritically describes its role as “global leadership” or maintaining a “rules based international order” or even defending “democracy against authoritarianism.” But at the same time the Biden Administration has just completed a fiasco evacuation that ended a twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan. Not having learned anything from Afghanistan, there are now US troops illegally present in Syria and Iraq and Washington is conniving to attack Iran over false claims made by Israel that the Iranians are developing a nuclear weapon. Neither Syria nor Iraq nor Iran in any way threaten the United States, just as the Russians did not threaten Americans prior to a regime change intervention in Ukraine starting in 2014, when the US arranged the overthrow of a government that was friendly to Moscow. The US has also begun to energize NATO to start looking at steps to take to confront the alleged Chinese threat.

The toll coming from constant warfare and fearmongering has also enabled a steady erosion of the liberties that Americans once enjoyed, including free speech and freedom to associate. I would like to discuss what the ordinary concerned citizen can do to cut through all the lies surrounding what is currently taking place, which might well be described as the most aggressive propaganda campaign the world has ever seen, far more extensive than the lying and dissimulation by the White House and Pentagon officials that preceded the disastrous Iraq war. It is an information plus propaganda war that sustains the actual fighting on the ground, and it is in some senses far more dangerous as it seeks to involve more countries in the carnage while also creating a global threat perception that will be used to justify further military interventions.

Part of the problem is that the US government is awash with bad information that it does not know how to manage so it makes it hard to identify anything that might actually be true. Back in my time as an intelligence officer operating overseas, there were a number of short cuts that were used to categorize and evaluate information. For example, if one were hanging out in a local bar and overheard two apparent government officials discussing something of interest that might be happening in the next week, one might report it to Washington with a source description FNU/LNU, which stood for “first name unknown” and “last name unknown.” In other words, it was unverifiable hearsay coming from two individuals who could not be identified. As such it was pretty much worthless, but it clogged up the system and invited speculation.

My personal favorite, however, was the more precise source descriptions developed by military intelligence using an alphabet letter followed by a number in a sequence running from A-1 to F-6. At the top of an intelligence report there would be an assessment of the source, or agent. A-1 meant a piece of information that was both credible and had been confirmed by other sources and that was also produced by an agent that had actual access to the information in question. At the other end of the scale, an F-6 was information that was dubious produced by a source that appeared to have no actual access to the information.

By that standard, we Americans have been fed a lot of largely fabricated F-6 “fake information” coming from both the government and the media to justify the Ukraine disaster. Here is how you can spot it. If it is a newspaper or magazine article skim all the way down the text until you reach a point towards the end where the sourcing of the information is generally hidden. If it is attributed to a named individual who indeed indisputably had direct access to the information it would at least suggest that the reporting contains a kernel of truth. But that is almost never the case, and one normally sees the source described as an “anonymous source” or a “government official” or even, in many cases, there is no source attribution at all. That generally means that the information conveyed in the reporting is completely unreliable and should be considered the product of a fabricator or a government and media propaganda mill. When a story is written by a journalist who claims to be on the scene it is also important to check out whether he or she is actually on site or working from a pool operating safely in Poland to produce the reporting. Yahoo News takes the prize in spreading propaganda as it currently reproduces press releases originating with the Ukrainian government and posts them as if they are unbiased reporting on what is taking place on the ground.

Another trick to making fake news look real is to route it through a third country. When I was in Turkey we in CIA never placed a story in the media there directly. Instead, a journalist on our payroll in France would do the story and the Turkish media would pick it up, believing that because it had appeared in Paris it must be true even though it was not. Currently, I have noted that a lot of apparently MI-6 produced fake stories on Ukraine have been appearing in the British media, most notably the Telegraph and Guardian. They are then replayed in the US media and elsewhere to validate stories that are essentially fabricated.

Television and radio media is even worse than print media as it almost never identifies the sources for the stories that it carries. So my advice is to be skeptical of what you read or hear regarding wars and rumors of wars. The war party is bipartisan in the United States and it is just itching to seize the opportunity to get a new venture going, and they are oblivious to the fact that they might in the process be about to destroy the world as we know it. We must expose their lies and unite and fight to make sure that they can’t get away with it!

Reprinted with permission from Unz Review.

from The All-American Lie Factory

Vietnam Anyone? US Lawmakers Call For Military Advisors To Ukraine!

A bipartisan group from the US Congress on a junket to Kiev have called for the Biden Administration to begin sending US military "advisors" to Ukraine. Not to the frontline (right away) they say. What could go wrong? Also today: Hungary's Orban delivers a blistering speech on Europe's failed Ukraine policy. And...in North Carolina the whole police force quits. You'll never believe why. Watch today's Liberty Report:

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/july/25/vietnam-anyone-us-lawmakers-call-for-military-advisors-to-ukraine/

Congressional Delegation in Kyiv Wants US Military Advisors Sent to Ukraine

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers visited Kyiv on Saturday, and two members of the delegation told Fox News that they support the idea of the Pentagon sending military advisors to Ukraine, which would significantly escalate US involvement in the war.

After meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Rep. Michael Waltz (R-FL) said he supported sending military advisors into Ukraine to oversee weapons shipments and help with intelligence and logistics. “It could be contracted, it could be civilian, but it could be military as well,” he said.

“I don’t think anybody is advocating for any [American] military on the front line, but helping with logistics, planning those operations, integrating the intelligence is incredibly important right now,” Waltz added said.

Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) also expressed support for sending military advisors to track weapons shipments. “It would be good to have a logistics officer here to make sure that we understand and track the weaponry that we’re sending,” she said.

Last month, The New York Times reported that there is CIA personnel operating in Ukraine to direct intelligence sharing with Kyiv. The report said there are also commandos in the country from Britain, France, Canada, and Lithuania to help facilitate the transfer of Western arms, but there is currently no known US military presence in Ukraine.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, was also part of the delegation that visited Kyiv but wasn’t quoted saying he supported sending military advisors.

Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com.

from Congressional Delegation in Kyiv Wants US Military Advisors Sent to Ukraine

Ukraine Grain Deal is a Feel-Good Event. But Road to Peace is Long and Winding

The agreements signed in Istanbul on Friday regarding the export of grain out of Ukraine and Russia catch the headlines as a major development from the angle of global food security, which it surely is. Between around 22 million tonnes of grain from last year’s harvest now trapped inside Ukraine due to the war, and an estimated 41 million tonnes from Russia’s 2022/23 wheat exports, around 60 million tonnes, are reaching the world grain market.

A conservative estimate is that Russia’s 2022 wheat crop will reach 85 million tonnes and if the weather holds good, it may go up to 90 million tonnes, a record harvest. Suffice to say, Russia’s importance to the global wheat balance in the new season is likely to be unprecedented. Supplies from Russia will account for more than 20 percent of the 2022/23 global wheat trade, consolidating its position as the world’s number one wheat exporting country. 

Thus, two sets of agreements were signed in Istanbul, one relating to the modalities of transportation of the Ukrainian grain from three designated ports on the Black Sea — Odessa, Chornomorsk and Yuzhne — via a “grain corridor” to Turkey and a second one between Russia and the United Nations relating to the lifting of western sanctions on Russia’s exports of wheat and fertiliser. 

In reality, Russia is getting sanctions waiver from the West even as it is facilitating the operation of the “grain corridor” out of Ukrainian ports in the war zone. Is there a linkage between the two? The answer is “yes” and “no”. But the Russian blockade of Ukrainian ports followed the western restrictions on shipping and insurance for Russian ports was more than a coincidence.

Therefore, this is a political victory for Russia — apart from substantial income out of the exports (roughly, $20 billion) and continued Russian presence in the important markets in Africa, the West Asian region, etc. which has strategic implications for Russian foreign policy in the medium and long term.

Under the agreement, Ukrainian vessels would guide ships in and out of Ukraine’s heavily mined ports, and Russia would agree not to attack the area while shipments were moving. Turkey’s role will be to inspect ships leaving Ukrainian ports for smuggled arms. In effect, Turkey has emerged as a broker between Russia and Ukraine under UN supervision from a Joint Coordination Centre being set up in Istanbul for the implementation of the accord. 

The fact that Russia and Ukraine could strike a deal at all is important enough. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has welcomed the grain deal in Istanbul as “a positive step towards addressing the far-reaching impacts of Russia’s war… The international community must now hold Russia accountable for this deal.” The Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, on his part, said Moscow finds it “gratifying that Washington and Brussels have stopped obstructing the path toward an agreement on grain.”

Things are adding up 

The big question is whether this development and the “feel-good” it created in a “win-win” spirit betwixt two warring nations would have any downstream impact. The indications are mostly discouraging but the dawn of peace often breaks unexpectedly. 

The military situation in Ukraine is somewhat static at the moment, although it can change abruptly. There have been no breakthroughs on the front lines since Russian forces seized the last two Ukrainian-held cities in the eastern province of Luhansk in late June and early July. The Russian operations in the Donetsk region have generally slowed down in the past fortnight but that could be attributed to the hilly terrain surrounding the key city of Slavyansk, which is of strategic importance. (The Ukrainian steppes begin to the west of Slavyansk.)

Meanwhile, a new phase of the war has commenced with the deployment of the HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) supplied by Pentagon, which fires GPS-guided rockets at targets 80 kilometres away, a distance that puts it out of reach of most Russian artillery systems. Conceivably, it bolsters Ukraine’s strike capability. But then, HIMARS is neither a game changer nor a compensation for the vast depletion of Ukrainian fighting capabilities during these 5 months of fighting, which will take years to recoup. 

Kiev seems to believe that its gradually increasing supply of Western arms, such as HIMARS, will enable it to recapture lost territory. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed Friday’s grain deal as unlocking around $10 billion worth of grain exports, but on the war as such, he said there could be no ceasefire unless lost territory was retaken. 

Zelensky said, “”Freezing the conflict with the Russian Federation means a pause that gives the Russian Federation a break for rest. They will not use this pause to change their geopolitics or to renounce their claims on the former Soviet republics.” The White House on Friday also announced $270 million in fresh support for Kiev, which includes four more HIMARS and up to 580 Phoenix Ghost drones, “produced specifically for Ukraine.” 

That said, the fact remains that the wheat deal is yet another instance of sanctions waiver by the European Union, where its own interests are also involved. In particular, shortage of fertiliser has become a hot button issue in Europe, which recently witnessed farmers’ protests. 

To be sure, things are adding up. The EU is increasingly hard-pressed to come up with credible sanction packages anymore. In the latest instance, after oil and gas and fertiliser, the EU blocked a proposal on Thursday to sanction a Russian metals company, which is a critical supplier of titanium to Airbus. 

The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban probably articulated a thought that is gaining ground in the European mind when he said in a speech in Romania on Saturday that the EU needs a new strategy on the war in Ukraine, as the sanctions against Moscow have not worked. “A new strategy is needed which should focus peace talks and drafting a good peace proposal … instead of winning the war,” Orban said. 

Orban recalled that the Western strategy has been built on four pillars: the first that Ukraine would win a war against Russia with NATO weapons; second, that sanctions would weaken Russia and destabilise its leadership; third, that sanctions would hurt Russia more than Europe; and, fourth, that the world would line up in support of Europe.

This strategy has failed, according to Orban, as governments in Europe are collapsing “like dominoes”, energy prices have surged and a new strategy was needed now. “We are sitting in a car that has a puncture in all four tires, it is absolutely clear that the war cannot be won in this way,” he said, adding that Ukraine will never win the war this way “quite simply because the Russian army has asymmetrical dominance.” 

Significantly, aside the plain-speak, the salience of Orban’s speech was his call for US-Russia talks. “Only Russian-US talks can put an end to the conflict because Russia wants security guarantees” only Washington can give, Orban said.

Orban’s speech came just two days after an unannounced visit to Moscow by the Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto on Thursday, ostensibly on a mission to discuss with his counterpart FM Sergey Lavrov the possibility of securing more gas supplies from Russia. Interestingly, Szijjarto flew to Moscow from Washington.

While in Washington, in an interview with the Washington Times, Szijjarto called for immediate talks to end the war in Ukraine, saying “all wars end up in negotiations” and the world should be focused on how to achieve peace by quickly bringing about a cessation of the nearly five-month-old conflict. 

Of course, Orban’s credentials to facilitate US-Russia talks are impeccable — and matchless. The known unknown here is whether there is sufficient interest among the warring parties to freeze the conflict at this point. Russia seems to insist that any peace talks at this stage would have to recognise its control over not only Donbass but the southern regions of Kherson and Zaporizhia as well. There is also talk of the special military operations going far beyond its originally set parameters. Indeed, the Kharkiv front has become kinetic.

The Moscow press and TV have been reporting that preparations are under way to hold referendum in Kherson and Zaporizhia on their integration into Russia. On Wednesday, on the eve of the “feel-good” news regarding the grain deal, the White House spokesman John Kirby alleged that “Russia is beginning to roll out a version of what you could call an annexation playbook” and that there is “ample evidence in the intelligence and in the public domain” of Russia’s unfolding efforts, which include installing the ruble as the national currency in the areas it intends to annex, just as it did in Crimea. 

One way of deciphering Kirby’s rhetoric is that it could be an opening shot? But the paradox is that the longer the war continues, the bigger becomes Russia’s scale of demands and by autumn / winter, Russian demands may well include Kharkiv — and, quite possibly, the Odessa Region as well.

‘Why Biden Failed’

On the other hand, the geopolitical reality is that Russia’s diplomatic space to manoeuvre is also expanding and possibly outstripping Washington. For instance, in the critical West Asian theatre which has historically been important for the western Cold War strategy against the former Soviet Union, President Biden tried to convince the nine Arab leaders he met in Jeddah last week that a reviving Cold War is coming to the Middle East and to sign up on the side of the US against Russia (and China), but “found no takers for his message, even when he added Iran to the equation,” to quote David Ottaway at the Wilson Center.

The public silence of those Arab leaders when it came to Biden’s talk of a Cold War or even the US and Israeli confrontation with Iran over its accelerating nuclear program was deafening. Again, on Tuesday, the ringing endorsement of Russia’s war in Ukraine by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during his meeting with President Putin went further than the Kremlin’s all other allies in backing Moscow in the Ukraine crisis, signalling a much stronger alliance between Moscow and Tehran in the making. 

Meanwhile, in a dramatic display of the reach of Russia’s influence in West Asia, upon his return from Tehran, Putin had a phone conversation with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud “with an emphasis on the expansion of mutually beneficial trade and economic ties” where they “examined developments on the global oil market”; “focused on the importance of further coordination within OPEC+”; and were “pleased to note that the OPEC+ member countries consistently fulfil their obligations in order to maintain the necessary balance and stability in the global energy market.” 

Again, on Thursday, even as the Istanbul agreements on grain exports were signed, Putin signed a decree on the holding of the second Russia-Africa Summit and other events of the Russia-Africa format in Russia in 2023, while on Sunday, Lavrov set out on an Africa tour to follow up, starting with Egypt. No doubt, Russia’s grain supply chains with African countries across the continent being restored now, Lavrov will top up Moscow’s dynamic agenda with African continent with newer areas of cooperation with special attention to the situation around Ukraine. 

The contrast between the America’s and Russia’s creativity on the diplomatic plane couldn’t be sharper. Biden promised a foreign policy in the interests of America’s middle class. What happened to it? Hasn’t the Biden presidency lost the plot? The sooner the Ukraine peace talks begin, the better chance for the western card in the long and difficult negotiations ahead.

Wisdom lies in seizing the “feel good” over the grain deal to open negotiations with Russia. Or else, 2022 might be the last year Ukraine would have exported its grain through its own ports on the Black Sea. The non-western world that has its priorities worked out on the development agenda and is struggling with recession and the pandemic has no interest in bandwagoning with the US’ new Cold War against Russia and China.

Surely, there must be some other way to regain America’s leadership role globally? Washington is not realising how much it is in the US interests too to rethink the Ukraine strategy and Russia relations.

What Biden’s recent tours abroad underscore is that “the damage done by decades of misguided US geopolitics cannot be undone,” while on the other hand, “the economic fallout from the war in Ukraine will push weakened institutions of governance to the point of collapse… (and) the pillars of the US’s own liberal regime are under attack.” These are excerpts from a searing piece titled Why Biden Failed authored by Adam Tooze, the well-known British historian who is a professor at Columbia University and Director of the European Institute.

Prof. Tooze wrote last week: “Meanwhile, the economic fallout from the war in Ukraine will push weakened institutions of governance to the point of collapse. And as Washington seeks to cajole “democracies against autocracies” abroad, the pillars of the US’s own liberal regime are under attack. The overturning of Roe vs Wade enables the reactionary denial of reproductive rights across red-state America.

“The (US) Supreme Court is also set on demolishing the legal bases for key environmental regulations… If Biden’s plan was to stabilise US democracy with progressive politics –- an updated New Deal for the 21st century –- the conclusion now is that his presidency has failed.”

Reprinted with permission from Indian Punchline.

from Ukraine Grain Deal is a Feel-Good Event. But Road to Peace is Long and Winding

Ugly Covid Lies

After two years of unprecedented government tyranny in the name of fighting a virus, the prime instigators of this infamy are walking free, writing books, and openly pretending they never said the things they clearly said over and over.

Take Trump’s White House Covid response coordinator Deborah Birx, for example. She was, as the Brownstone Institute’s Jeffrey Tucker points out in a recent article, the principal architect of the disastrous “lockdown” policy that destroyed more lives than Covid itself. Birx knew that locking a country down in response to a virus was a radical move that would never be endorsed. So, as she admits in her new book, she lied about it.

She sold the White House on the out-of-thin-air “fifteen days to slow the spread” all the while knowing there was no evidence it would do any such thing. As she wrote in her new book, Silent Invasion, “I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them.”

She was playing for time with no evidence. As it turns out, she was also destroying the lives of millions of Americans. The hysteria she created led to countless businesses destroyed, countless suicides, major depressions, drug and alcohol addictions. It led to countless deaths due to delays in treatment for other diseases. It may turn out to be the most deadly mistake in medical history.

As she revealed in her book, she actually wanted to isolate every single person in the United States! Writing about how many people would be allowed to gather, she said: “If I pushed for zero (which was actually what I wanted and what was required), this would have been interpreted as a ‘lockdown’—the perception we were all working so hard to avoid.”

She wanted to prevent even two people from meeting. How is it possible that someone like this came to gain so much power over our lives? One virus and we suddenly become Communist China?

Last week in a Fox News interview she again revealed the extent of her treachery. After months of relentlessly demanding that all Americans get the Covid shots, she revealed that the “vaccines” were not vaccines at all!

“I knew these vaccines were not going to protect against infection,” she told Fox. “And I think we overplayed the vaccines. And it made people then worry that it’s not going to protect against severe disease and hospitalization.”

So when did she know this? Did she know it when she told ABC in late 2020 that “this is one of the most highly-effective vaccines we have in our infectious disease arsenal. And so that’s why I’m very enthusiastic about the vaccine”?

If she knew all along that the “vaccines” were not vaccines, why didn’t she tell us? Because, as she admits in her book, she believes it’s just fine to lie to people in order to get them to do what she wants.

She admits that she employed “subterfuge” against her boss – President Donald Trump – to implement Covid policies he opposed. So it should be no surprise that she lied to the American people about the efficacy of the Covid shots.

The big question now, after what appears to be a tsunami of vaccine-related injuries, is will anyone be forced to pay for the lies and subterfuge? Will anyone be held to account for the lives lost for the arrogance of the Birxes and Faucis of the world?

from Ugly Covid Lies

This Week, ‘Professor’ Daniel McAdams at Mises University

Sunday afternoon, the Mises Institute’s week-long education event Mises University kicks off. And, on Saturday, the final day of the event, Ron Paul Institute (RPI) Executive Director Daniel McAdams will be the event’s penultimate speaker, presenting a lecture titled “Foreign Policy is Welfare for the Rich.”

The schedule for the event, the main focus of which is matters related to Austrian economics, looks impressive. For people who cannot attend Mises University, the Mises Institute is making lectures available live online for free for its members and for a fee for anyone else.

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/july/24/this-week-professor-daniel-mcadams-at-mises-university/

The Great Game of Politics is Not What You Think

It's tempting to think of geopolitics as a chess game - a game of strategy and goal achievement invented by the Iranians and perfected by the Russians, says Tom Loungo at the Ron Paul Institute's Houston Conference. However, this model is not adequate as it distills geopolitics down to just a two player game. The best game to understand geopolitics is the ancient Chinese game called "go." 

Like the speech? Don't forget to get your tickets for the next Ron Paul Institute conference in Washington DC on Sept. 3rd. Get your tickets here.

from The Great Game of Politics is Not What You Think

White House Approves 16th Weapons Transfer to Ukraine, Total Security Aid Now Over $8 Billion

The White House announced a $270 million weapons package Kiev on Friday. The latest transfer will send four additional High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS and drones to Ukraine.

The additional four HIMARS brings the total number the US has committed to sending to Ukraine to 16. Commander of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley said the other 12 HIMARS have reached Ukraine and have not been destroyed by Russia. The US has provided Ukraine with rockets that can be fired 50 miles by the rocket systems.

John Kirby, communications director for the National Security Council, announced the package on Friday. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin told reporters on Wednesday the US would be sending the additional HIMARS.

The package also includes 36,000 rounds of artillery ammunition for howitzers and 560 Phoenix Ghost tactical drones. The latest transfer is the 17th approved by the White House since Russia invaded Ukraine in February. The Biden administration has now committed over $8 billion in weapons to Kiev’s fight.

Russia has been critical of arms assistance to Ukraine from the US and its allies. The HIMARS have drawn particular ire from the Kremlin because of the platform’s long range. Ukrainian officials have recently suggested the HIMARS could be used in an offensive to retake the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014.

Last week, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Kremlin had decided to take more Ukrainian territory because of the advanced weapons the West sent to Kiev. "That means the geographical tasks will extend still further from the current line. We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that Zelensky will control or whoever replaces him to have weapons that will pose a direct threat to our territory and the territory of those republics that have declared their independence," he said.

Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com.

from White House Approves 16th Weapons Transfer to Ukraine, Total Security Aid Now Over $8 Billion

The Truth About Madison and Slavery

Below is my column in the Washington Times responding to the controversy over changes at the home of James Madison. While I have not been to Montpelier since the reported changes, I wanted to respond to the condemnation of Madison as “an enslaver.” He was indeed an enslaver but the truth is far more complex than presented by critics.

Here is the column:

If there is one concept that captured the brilliant vision of President James Madison for government, it was his statement in Federalist 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” The use of checks and balances to prevent the concentration of power was key to the stability of the constitutional system that he created. Indeed, his own home at Montpelier may now be an example of what happens when there is such a concentration of power and no check on its excess.

Recently, billionaire David M. Rubenstein gave $10 million to renovate and repair Montpelier. Mr. Rubenstein has given generously through the years to preserve historical documents and buildings. However, he has been accused of unleashing a newly formed, activist board on the property, which has transformed into what critics view as an ideological mission. It is a trend that we have seen at other historical sites, including the National Archives.

Last May, the National Trust for Historic Preservation reportedly pushed the board to accept a new slate of board members with a new agenda. Board member Mary Alexander, a descendant of Madison’s slave Paul Jennings, objected that the new members set out to transform Montpelier into “a black history and black rights organization that could care less about James Madison and his legacy.”

The exhibits now emphasize Madison “the enslaver,” and visitors have complained that there is little comparative attention to his contributions to political theory and institutions.

Visitors are greeted with a sign saying that the estate “made Madison the philosopher, farmer, statesman, and enslaver that he was.” Other exhibits discuss how every one of the nation’s first 18 presidents benefited from slavery, including anti-slavery figures like John Adams and Abraham Lincoln.

As a Madisonian scholar and devotee, I have long discussed the contradiction of slavery and the views of the founders, including Madison. It is an important element to highlight for visitors to estates like Monticello and Montpelier. However, history is often more complex than simple condemnations and Montpelier is an example of how the true history of Madison and slavery can be lost to serve current political interests.

Some of the information at Montpelier appears to reflect the claims of the highly controversial 1619 Project led by former New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, which claimed that racism was the driving force behind the entire American political system. The claim has been challenged by academics and even one of the key fact-checkers at the Times. Historians objected that “matters of verifiable fact” that “cannot be described as interpretation or ‘framing.’” They objected that the work represented “a displacement of historical understanding by ideology.”

While the project has commendable elements, the view that the Revolution was primarily fought to further slavery is revisionist tripe. However, while it does not fit the historical evidence, it fits perfectly with contemporary politics.

Whatever the merits of the criticism over these exhibits may be, it is inaccurate and ahistorical to reduce Madison as just another “enslaver.” The true story is far more nuanced and frankly intriguing.

Madison had slaves, and that is a great stain on his legacy.

However, Madison also opposed slavery and sought its elimination. His views often put him at odds with other Virginians. Even during the Revolution, Madison opposed a proposal to offer recruits free slaves for their service and instead proposed giving slaves their freedom in exchange for their military service as “more consonant to the principles of liberty which ought never to be loss sight of in a contest for liberty.”

While Madison wrote early in his career to Edmund Randolph that he wanted “to depend as little as possible on the labor of slaves,” he never made that break with the infamous use of such labor.

Before the Constitutional Convention, Madison wrote a publication entitled “Vices of the Political System of the United States,” which declared that “where slavery exists the republican Theory becomes still more fallacious.”

Madison, however, would forge a compromise with pro-slave delegates in the infamous provision that set representation in one house be based on the number of free inhabitants in each state plus three-fifths of the number of slaves.

Madison would continue to work with those resisting slavery, including the dispatch of an extraordinary letter in 1810 to the American minister to Great Britain, William Pinkney, supporting the British condemnation of an American slave ship — even suggesting arguments to facilitate such condemnation. As president, he pushed Congress to end the slave trade.

The compromise captures much of the conflicted background of Madison and slavery. He often chose compromise while seeking to nudge the country toward banning slavery. He met in his home with abolitionists and free slaves to discuss ending slavery.

Madison resisted selling slaves and sold off property to support his estate instead. In his will, Madison asked that the slaves not be sold and instead be allowed to remain on the property until their deaths. (Dolley Madison would later sell the property and the slaves due to the towering debt).

The fact is that there were better men when it came to slavery. General Marquis de Lafayette was a better man. The fierce abolitionist visited Madison and viewed him as a kindred spirit, but noted the continued presence of slaves on the property. Madison’s aide, Edward Coles, was a better man. With Madison’s praise, Coles freed his slaves shortly after Madison retired from the presidency and gave each of them some land in Illinois.

Madison did not believe that freed slaves could live and thrive in a country given “the prejudices of the whites, prejudices which … must be considered as permanent and insuperable.” He proposed instead the funding of a colony in Africa for freed slaves.

Madison always viewed slavery as the thing that would tear the country (and his Constitution) apart. He would be proved correct in 1865. However, his efforts to compromise in favor of incremental progress sacrificed principle to politics.

That is a far more interesting and instructive history than the misleading portrayal created at Montpelier. Just as Madison too readily yielded to politics in his life, the new board has done so today in this revisionist account of this great but complicated historical figure.

Reprinted with permission from JonathanTurley.org.

from The Truth About Madison and Slavery

Narrative Fail? Quad Vaxxed Biden...Has Covid!

One year ago today President Biden told Americans if they get the Covid shot they won't get Covid. Today the quadruple vaccinated Biden has announced that...he has Covid. Has the narrative failed? Also today - dueling narratives: Pelosi demands Blinken designate Russia as a terrorist state while NPR runs article about Ukraine corruption. Watch today's Liberty Report:

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/july/21/narrative-fail-quad-vaxxed-bidenhas-covid/

Money Pit: Zelensky govt signals intent to default on tens of billions in foreign debts

Western governments have allocated well over $100 billion to prop up Ukraine in its war against Russia, with countless billions more flooding into the country at an increasing pace. Yet as each day passes, it’s becoming more and more clear that all of the money awarded and assigned to Ukraine continues to dissolve into a black hole of secrecy, corruption, deceit, and now, default.

On Wednesday, Ukraine finance ministry asked foreign creditors to accept a delay in its debt repayments, requesting a two year freeze on billions of dollars in Eurobonds. Per the Financial Times, “a rescheduling would amount to a Ukrainian default” on Kiev’s tens of billions in foreign debt.

Although western financial support has increased since May, Kyiv is still counting on Ukraine's central bank to buy its debt by selling foreign reserves or printing money, at the risk of setting off an inflationary spiral https://t.co/1RjuDJun7X

— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) July 19, 2022

The news comes just one day after the EU ambassador to Kiev insisted that Ukraine would not default on its foreign debt.

The junk-rated sovereign has a balance of about $25 billion of foreign debt, Bloomberg reports.

Despite all of the money coming in from around the world, Ukraine’s budget deficit has spiraled out of control. Zelensky’s office now claims to have a $9 billion monthly budget deficit, up 80% from just last month.

“Ukraine’s dollar bonds due in 2033 are trading around 18 cents on the dollar, down from about 25 cents at the end of last month and more than 80 cents before Russia’s invasion in February,” the Bloomberg report adds, highlighting the continuing decline of creditor confidence.



Ukraine estimates a 35 to 45 percent crash in its GDP this year. The government in Kiev is hoping to finalize the debt deferral by August 9, Reuters reports.

As we’ve covered in depth at The Dossier, Ukraine is losing both the economic war and the war on the physical battlefield, but the Zelensky government continues to dismiss the prospect of an armistice or peace deal with Moscow.

In addition to the government as a whole, Ukraine’s state-owned infrastructure and national energy companies have also announced their intent to default on international bonds. Earlier this week, Kiev announced that it has sold some $12+ billion in gold reserves since the start of the war.

The Western government creditors of Ukraine released a joint statement in support of Ukraine’s debt freeze, adding that they “will continue to closely coordinate and assess the situation with the support of the IMF and the World Bank.”

Translation: Western governments will continue to print huge amounts of cash and launch it in the direction of the Ukraine operation. 

While this default will not stop the West’s perpetual Ukrainian money train operation, it sends a very loud $25+ billion signal to greater credit markets. What if other countries follow suit, citing other "national emergencies" and the like? Is the “Climate Emergency” now grounds for default?

Reprinted with permission from The Dossier.
Subscribe to The Dossier here.

from Money Pit: Zelensky govt signals intent to default on tens of billions in foreign debts

US Transportation Secretary: The More Gas Price Pain...The More Benefit!

First up today a HUGE announcement from the Ron Paul Liberty Report!! Then on today's program: Biden's Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg believes Americans suffering at the gas pumps is actually a very good thing because it will force them to purchase electric vehicles. US Rep Massie hammers this delusional view. Also today: Ukraine threatens to smash Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet. WWIII? Today on the Liberty Report:

from http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2022/july/20/us-transportation-secretary-the-more-gas-price-painthe-more-benefit/

The Language Vandals

Language is a critical tool for communication among humans; we cry "watch out" when a speeding car hurtles toward a pedestrian. We also think of language as a cognitive tool for society at large, since all human learning is closely tied to how we learn and process language.

et sometimes we forget language is also an important social and cultural institution. And like all institutions, it is subject to corruption, in the form of capture by elites with agendas quite contrary to those of average people. Since language shapes our understanding of all human interactions, academics from all disciplines—but particularly social scientists—ought to pay more attention to linguistic corruption. When language becomes politicized, managed, and policed, we ought to notice, and we ought to fight back.

I make this very point in an upcoming article titled "Evolution or Corruption: The Imposition of Political Language in the West Today," which will be published this fall in the Italian journal Etica e politica (put out by the University of Trieste Department of Philosophy). The article argues that top-down impositions, rather than natural evolution, often drive changes in language. It analogizes the linguistic "marketplace" with the market for goods and services. Impositions are akin to central planning, while evolution is akin to spontaneous order in the marketplace. The former occurs when elites in politics, media, journalism, and academia attempt to influence both the words we use and the meaning of those words. This is invariably in service of a statist agenda, just as economic interventions serve preferred interests at the expense of overall wealth and efficiency. The constant use and repetition of the word "gender" (a term relating to grammar) when we should use "sex" is one obvious example of imposed, corrupted language in service of a political agenda (trans). By contrast, the Middle English "whilst" sounds odd to our ear today—having naturally evolved into "while" without obvious or heavy-handed direction.

The great Spanish Austro-libertarian economist Jesús Huerta de Soto applies Carl Menger's theory on the evolution of money to language:

Thus there is an unconscious social process of learning by imitation which explains how the pioneering behavior of these most successful and creative individuals catches on and eventually extends to the rest of society. Also, due to this evolutionary process, those societies which first adopt successful principles and institutions tend to spread and prevail over other social groups. Although Menger developed his theory in relation to the origin and evolution of money, he also mentions that the same essential theoretical framework can be easily applied to the study of the origins and development of language, as well as to our present topic, juridical institutions. Hence the paradoxical fact that the moral, juridical, economic, and linguistic institutions which are most important and essential to man's life in society are not of his own creation, because he lacks the necessary intellectual might to assimilate the vast body of random information that these institutions generate. On the contrary, these institutions inevitably and spontaneously emanate from the social process of human interaction which Menger believes should be the main research in economics.1

Today, it appears linguistic interventionism is alive and well in the West. Language is a subset of culture, albeit a very important subset, and we can hardly expect progressives to leave it alone. Like culture, language is not property, and it cannot be "owned." But it can be influenced and steered by linguistic vandals seeking to topple old understandings and leave us all overwhelmed and demoralized by the ever-shifting new terminology.

In the quaint, innocent days of 2015, we still called this progressive impulse "political correctness." I attempted to define it then:

Political correctness is the conscious, designed manipulation of language intended to change the way people speak, write, think, feel, and act, in furtherance of an agenda.

PC is best understood as propaganda, which is how I suggest we approach it. But unlike propaganda, which historically has been used by governments to win favor for a particular campaign or effort, PC is all-encompassing. It seeks nothing less than to mold us into modern versions of Marx's un-alienated society man, freed of all his bourgeois pretensions and humdrum social conventions.

Like all propaganda, PC fundamentally is a lie. It is about refusing to deal with the underlying nature of reality, in fact attempting to alter that reality by legislative and social fiat. A is no longer A.

Today, of course, PC is obsolete—replaced entirely by the far broader concept of "woke," which goes well beyond language. And to be sure, "woke" is so vague and so overused as to be a poignant example of George Orwell's meaningless words, which I discuss at length in the article. Meaningless words, Orwell explained, are used in consciously dishonest ways in furtherance of an agenda. They become disembodied from any real meaning or definition, serving as empty slogans for things we like ("democracy") or things we don't like ("fascism").

Here is an example of a progressive using "woke" as code for "the correct left progressive attitudes": 

"Woke" is defined as being aware of injustice in society, especially, but not limited to, racism. Which doesn't seem anything that most people would be opposed to, especially superhero comics, which would seem to be all about fighting injustice but, I guess, welcome to the internet.

Well, no, that is distinctly not what "woke" means. It is self-serving claptrap: "All good people (Us) are woke, which is really just left-wing code for caring and empathetic! Who could deny injustice and racism! I'd hate to think what unwoke people (Them) really believe, ho ho ho!" But these language imposers are not good people at all, or even well-intentioned people. Quite the opposite; they are lying, dissembling, projecting ideologues who want to commandeer the English language. Woke is the animating force behind today's relentless progressive attempts to impose and corrupt language to advance a host of wholly politicized movements.

From my paper: 

Even five years ago, the top-down or centralized force operating to corrupt the language of politics and economics could have been broadly termed "political correctness" (PC). Today the term is obsolete, another example of the rapid (unnatural) evolution of usage in Western society. PC referred more narrowly to acceptable speech, whereas today's linguistic enforcers seek to impose a whole new mindset, attitude, and way of thinking. Thus, PC has been replaced by an even broader and more amorphous term, "woke." Woke, whether a slur or not, may be used very broadly to represent strident left progressive beliefs regarding race, sex, sexuality, equality, climate change, and the like. Woke demands ever-changing language, and constantly creates new words while eliminating old ones. As a result, "cancellation," de-platforming, and loss of employment or standing all loom large, giving pause to speakers and writers who must consider a new woke orthodoxy.

Ultimately, imposed language attempts to control our actions. When we broadly consider politically correct or woke worldviews—i.e. an activist mindset concerned with promoting amorphous social justice—the linguistic element is straightforward.

I'm afraid the paper is embargoed until September, so I can't provide the actual text yet. Both Orwell and F.A. Hayek figure prominently in it, and it is full of examples of imposed, contorted language issued by politicians, CEOs, central bankers, media figures, advertisers, academics, and elites of every stripe. It argues that language is worth defending from the linguistic vandals at every turn. In fact, language is the one institution we can defend every day through our own thoughts, words, and writing. It is guerilla warfare, fought every day in the trenches.

• 1.Jesús Huerta de Soto, “The Emergence of Traditional Legal Principles According to Menger, Hayek, and Leoni,” in Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, translated by Melinda A. Stroup (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006), pp. 21–22. 

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

from The Language Vandals

McConnell’s ‘Wartime’ COVID Investments Come Home to Roost

“Bidenflation” existed before he staggered into office on January 20, 2021. It was catalyzed when nearly every Republican supported the worst piece of legislation in American history on March 25, 2020, which set off a cascade of several other pieces of legislation underwriting, incentivizing, and consummating COVID lockdowns. The chief cheerleader of the bill at the time was none other than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the man whom Republicans are pining to see become floor leader once again next year to solve the inflation crisis. But in order to solve it, don’t we need to first acknowledge the cause and who was responsible?

Last week, Sen. Mitch McConnell tossed out the same tired bromide about Biden causing inflation with his $1.9 trillion reckless spending “on party line” last year.

One clear reason we're suffering from 40-year high inflation: The $1.9 trillion reckless spending this all-Democratic government passed on a party-line basis last year.

Now, after spending us into inflation, they want to tax us into a recession. pic.twitter.com/B2oZgpOkrE

— Leader McConnell (@LeaderMcConnell) July 14, 2022

What he forgets to tell you is that the bulk of the unfathomable levels of spending came from the worst legislation in American history: the $2.2 trillion COVID lockdown/Big Pharma bill that he ardently pushed for in March 2020, which at the time, represented half of the entire federal budget! That bill led to a cascading effect of unconscionable spendingand tyranny that, between Congress and the Federal Reserve, unleashed more than $10 trillion on the economy.


(bigger)

At the time, McConnell praised it as “a wartime level of investment into our nation.” “The men and women of the greatest country on Earth are going to defeat this coronavirus and reclaim our future," said Majority Leader Mitch McConnell when announcing the deal that morning. "The Senate's going to make sure that they have the ammunition they need to do it."

Except, it wasn’t a wartime investment in production, it was an investment in lockdown, paying people not to work, imposing tyranny, and inducing a vicious cycle of Big Pharma failure that perpetuated both the pandemic and the economic misery. Milton Friedman famously described inflation as the result of "too much money chasing too few goods.” Never was there a time in history when Congress voted to spend so much money to simultaneously shut down production and make goods scarce while lining the pockets of individuals and corporations with endless cash. As the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank concededin March when groping in the dark for the culprit of the history inflation, “In seeking an explanation, we turn to the combination of direct fiscal support introduced to counteract the economic devastation caused by the pandemic."

Because of the terrible COVID policies Republicans still refuse to acknowledge, the federal reserve went on such a bond buying spree that it literally increased the money supply by 40% and did this all while the same policies were shrinking output.

Read the rest here.

from McConnell’s ‘Wartime’ COVID Investments Come Home to Roost